Improvisers love to analyze things. My theory on this is that what attracts us to improv is the sense of freedom it gives us – freedom from having to analyze everything, to just DO. But we can’t get away from our analytical natures, so we keep analyzing. Our favorite thing to analyze is ourselves, so we crave feedback from our instructors and hang out in the bar after a show dissecting every detail.

I put together a team about four months ago, and lately they’ve been asking me to give them formal evaluations. They want me to judge their work, tell them where they’re deficient and what they need to do to remedy those deficiencies. I hesitated. I give evaluations when I teach but those take place at the end of an 8-week session, when students are getting ready to move on to the next level (or decide if they want to continue). I want my students to go home and process the feedback. My hope is that the process of reflection will allow them to create their own goals rather than swallowing whole the opinion of one person.​I prefer to give feedback in the form of specific, actionable notes rather than to make a global statement about each student’s work. My take is influenced by Dave Razowsky’s philosophy: “The story that you tell yourself is just that, your story. You can change it at any time. Who you think you are is just that, who you THINK you are. You can change it.”So I came up with a compromise. Rather than giving my players the evaluations they requested, I provided them with the following descriptions of clusters of improv skills, as described by notable improvisers.* (You will notice a lot of overlap among them). I asked the players to think about which description they related to the most, and afterward we discussed it as a team.

“Right-handed improvisers are driven by their left brains. They are driven by wit. For them it is more important to say something funny than it is to say something funnily. Once off stage they can talk through every moment of a scene and what they were thinking when they said their lines.”

“Left-handed improvisers are driven by their sense of drama, by character, and by submitting to the moment. Losing themselves in the scene is the highest goal. I would say they care more about how they say something than what they say, but that would imply that there is some logical choice going on. In left-handed improvisers there isn’t. By committing to character and the truth of a moment they, by natural byproduct, say amazing appropriate and insightful things and get laughs.”

Rachael Mason

Headtypes like to initiate in scenes, and those initiations are usually verbal. They are quick to pick up on the game of the scene, to recognize patterns, and to drop references. They also edit well. This sensibility is reflected in the Second City and UCB approaches to improv.

When Hearttypes initiate scenes, typically they do so with object work. They remain physical through the scene and play strong characters. Their choices tend to be based on the emotion of the scene. They are natural heighteners. This sensibility is reflected in the iO and Magnet approaches to improv.

X-Factortypes start scenes however they darn well please. To the inexperienced improviser, it may seem as though these people are clumsily throwing a wrench into the works. Their scene partners have to work to justify these peoples’ choices, but often, this is where the whimsy in scenes comes from. The motivation of these players may be conscious, unconscious, or malicious. This sensibility is reflected in the Annoyance and PIT approaches to improv.

“Attack your scene like a Pirate. Sail alongside of the scene then at the right time swing aboard. Land on the deck of the scene, giving a harty YARRRrrrrr. Pull out your sword and initiate. Hack away at denial with vicious positivity. Bathe yourself in the blood of good scenework. Look a "transaction" scene in the eye and watch it quake in its boots, then run it through. Rape an "argument" scene, and pillage a "teaching" scene. Then when it is all done, collect your booty. Look for your next victim.”

“Analyze your scene like a Robot. You are Robot. You are machine. You maintain system integrity. You look for the unusual in the situation given you. You lock onto what is different in the situation. You process. You apply the IF-THAT-THEN-WHAT-ELSE program. You build. You create. You move on to the next situation. You go from situation to situation adding and deleting what is needed to make the system run smoothly. When complete you collect booty.”

“Edit like a Ninja. You are one with the wall. No one can see you. You are silent. You are death. You watch from your perch waiting for your victim. Your victim is the scene. In order for you to kill the scene you must understand the scene. Become one with the scene. When the scene least expects it, you ride in on the winds of change, silently cutting the throats of all in the scene. Before the scene knows what happened, they all fall away. Without the death of that scene a new scene can never grow; you must do what you do so that all may benefit. You must keep the balance. Without you there would be chaos. You wait silently for your next victim. You collect your booty.”

“There are people that are just innately "wired" for funny; the Funnyaptitude experiences the world through that sensibility. They live in the exchange of circumstance given premise (think the UCB tenant 'If this is true in this world, then WHAT ELSE could be true'), usually the verbal "game," and the pursuit of Funny in a scene appears effortless, even if they're straining or allowing self-consciousness into their character. “

“Actor aptitude can play honest, intense, and deep. They listen through emotion and are affected by manner and the unspoken. They play the exchange of emotion as their primary experience and concern themselves with chasing a laugh secondarily, but can bring greater depth to moments and the show by augmenting people with a greater "Funny" aptitude.”

“Glue aptitude sees and hears the whole. They are the puzzle workers and are often visual learners and analytical thinkers. They are in possession of the patterns of the show: they make far-out declarations relevant; they hear puns and rhymes and enjoy word smithing and word play. They are in the most possession of the objective awareness of the show as a whole than the others. They tend to be second line players/responders and highly adaptive. However, they tend to be less dynamic along the energy spectrum of how they present their characters. They are excellent at deadpan and leading the charge into the meta.”

“Wild Card is the one that doesn't fold in with the other three, because those people are so powerfully and uniquely themselves that they flavor everyone else in the group's method of play. They are big personalities on stage and tend to just be themselves, amplified and consistent, and you either take the ride with them and account for their sensibility, or the show's going to be in trouble. A number of stand-ups that do improv fall into this category, and in a way, this is a way to account for stand-up sensibility in putting together a group.”

My players had a productive discussion. Most of the their self-evaluations were in line with how I would have pegged them. A few were unsure, but their teammates were able to help them figure it out. Everyone got insight into what they need to work on without the good/bad judgment that seems so out of place in improv.​To be an excellent player, the improviser should be able to play in whatever style the scene, piece, or team needs. But knowing where your core competencies lie can only help you grow as a player.​Which system for categorizing improv skills resonates with you? Do you find these descriptions helpful, or are they too constricting?

​*Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. Where possible I have provided a link to the original source.